Two startups are targeting women as early users of their social health and wellness platforms, and with recent changes and controversy in women’s health initiatives, they could not have emerged at a better time.

HealthTap launched last year, and ChickRx just launched in July with Q&A platforms for patients seeking credible health information. It’s been a busy week for both sites: Under a new health law, insurance companies are now required to cover women’s preventive care at no upfront cost, including birth control, and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Latch On NYC, which requires hospitals to limit access to infant formula, is getting women talking about breastfeeding.

“Twenty five percent of doctor visits are just questions and answers,” says HealthTap’s CEO Ron Gutman. While HealthTap is working to broaden its audience, ChickRx wants to answer those questions specifically for women.

ChickRx has been called “WebMD for women” and its a far less clinical version of the health reference site. At the heart of ChickRx is a community of women asking questions about what matters to them most, from breast cancer to weight loss, with articles and ecommerce folded in. Being new, there is a smaller number of available doctors and experts, about 200 at its launch.

HealthTap recognized a similar opportunity to disrupt WebMD. Gutman says he was inspired to start the company after reading a Pew study that revealed about half of people seeking health information online found “no help” at all. To ensure its information and advice is credible, HealthTap screens participating doctors through an application process. Women remain the majority of HealthTap’s users, but the site has since expanded its available experts to 13,000 doctors in 115 specialities.

“We decided to launch the platform with OB/GYNs and pediatricians, targeting pregnant women and moms. Women are the Chief Medical Officers of the family from taking care of the kids to her own parents,” says Gutman.

More than a year ahead of ChickRx, HealthTap recently launched apps for iPhone, Android, and iPad. ChickRx has raised $550,000 in seed funding and says it also plans to launch mobile products. With Obamacare promising major changes to healthcare, these new consumer Web companies could gain traction as the go-to for quick, accurate information.

Booker, which helps service businesses better engage with customers online, has raised $35 million in a Series C round led by Medina Capital, with participation from strategic investor First Data, Jump Capital, and Signal Peak Ventures, as well as existing investors. The New York City company now sees 3 million appointments booked monthly across 73 countries in 11 languages on its platform. [via Booker]

PCH, a company which “helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into brands and makes a variety of consumer tech products for major companies such as Apple,” has acquired Fab for a reported $15 million in cash and stock. Fab previously had a $1 billion valuation and raised $325 million. It will “continue to focus on design” at PCH. [Source: Bloomberg]

BlackBerry has unveiled several new smartphones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, including the touchscreen-focused BlackBerry Leap and a device with a “dual curve slider,” in addition to its keyboard-equipped products. [Source: New York Times]

March 3, 2015

“I hope to have a bigger presence in the tech world. I love coming up with different app ideas, and I have a few more that are coming out. Once you get started and you have this creative bug of ideas that you want to get out, I feel like I’ve partnered with the right team, and now I have the creative outlet to make that happen. I’m happy that people are into it and perceiving it well. I just want to create more apps.”

PayPal is planning to acquire Paydiant, the company behind CurrentC — retailers’ answer to Apple Pay — for a reported $280 million. No word yet on how the companies will mix, nor if Paydiant’s relationship with the industry group behind CurrentC will remain intact. [Source: Re/code]

Microsoft is in talks to acquire Prismatic, a news aggregation service that uses natural language processing to recommend content in which its users might be interested, according to a report from TechCrunch. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook are all said to have expressed similar interest in the company. (Which is surely a sign of actual interest and not at all an attempt by someone at the company to make it seem like a hot commodity — right?) [Source: TechCrunch]

March 2, 2015

“Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.”

Samsung has announced Samsung Pay, a competitor to the Apple Pay product included in Apple’s latest iPhones, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The feature will allow new Samsung Galaxy S6 owners who use MasterCard to pay for goods with their phones. It’s not clear when other credit card companies will be supported. [Source: The Guardian]